Restaurants and other vendors who provide various types of services acknowledge the value of accurately identifying their customers, nurturing their relationships with their customers to retain their business, and communicating effectively with their customer base. To meet this need, vendors routinely provide various types of incentives to reach new customers, to rekindle interest among existing customers, and to reward loyalty from long-term customers. Promotional incentives, coupons, membership programs, and other tools have been widely used for this purpose in the restaurant business and in other service businesses.
Customers of restaurants and other services often schedule their business with the service vendor beforehand, making some type of reservation; alternately, upon arrival at the restaurant or other vendor site, customers may expect to wait for service for some period of time. This wait time is often detrimental for the vendor and can even have negative impact on customer-vendor interaction and the overall customer experience. Other than adding the customers' names to a wait-list or queue, there is little the vendor can do to take advantage of this wait period and to make it a more positive experience for the customer. Instead, waiting time can be detrimental for business as customers can easily become bored, anxious, or even upset at what they may perceive as a lack of vendor interest in their needs.
With the advent of wireless phones and other personal communication devices, the management of a restaurant or other service can more easily communicate with its customers, such as to indicate that seating is now available or that they are next in line for service. Restaurants, for example, now routinely utilize the customer's cell phone as a type of “pager” for informing the customer that a table is ready. Other aspects and capabilities of the cell phone, smartphone, or other customer device are not used, however; only its paging capability is employed. While it makes it easier to reach the customer and can be less expensive than using proprietary “beeper” systems, this practice does not help to resolve the inherent problems of wait-time or offer any opportunity for building a longer term relationship with the customer.
Thus, it can be seen that there is a need for a customer relationship management system that can use waiting time more effectively and help the service vendor to generate and foster improved relationships with customers.